Tales from Q School: Inside Golf's Fifth Major

by John Feinstein

  He turned pro, flunked Q School, and ended up playing in South Africa for two years after buying a plane ticket from Nolan Henke. Henke had been planning to play there but then made it through Q School and didn’t need the ticket. Tolles finally made it through Q School in 1994—his seventh attempt—and looked to be well on his way to stardom when he finished second at the Players Championship in 1996 and ended up 16th on the money list at the end of that year. A year later, he was 27th on the money list, and he and his wife, Ilse, bought a five-acre farm in the tiny town of Flat Rock, North Carolina.

  “I’m the story you’ve heard a million times,” he said. “Guy who is playing well and tries to change his swing to play better, only he plays worse. I worked with a great teacher when I was a kid—Jeff Heilman in Bonita Bay [near where he grew up in Florida]. I don’t think he’s ever told me anything wrong, but I’ve gone off and seen other instructors behind his back. It might take less time to list the guys I haven’t seen than to list the guys I have seen: Jim McLean, Marty Fleckman, David Leadbetter. I’ve worked with [psychologist] Bob Rotella. I guess it’s fair to say I tend to overthink about my swing.

  “It isn’t so much that you can learn too much, but you can try too much. I’ve listened to all these people through the years, but the thing is, when you’re out on a golf course playing in a tournament, you’re on an island all alone. It’s almost as if I’ve gone to all these different guys so that someone else can swing the club for me. Problem is, it doesn’t work that way.

  “My swing, when I was playing my best in the mid-’90s, was never pretty. But it was effective. I was always a hooker, but I decided I’d be a better player if I could hit cuts like [Jeff] Sluman and [Tim] Herron. So I tried hitting cuts. It took me a while, but I finally figured out I can’t hit cuts. I’ve got to hook the ball. Like with anything, I had to learn it the hard way.”

  Tolles also switched equipment, as so many players do when offered a lot of money while they’re hot. In this case, the company was Tommy Armour, and the contract was for four years. “I’d been playing Ping for ten straight years. Look, in the end it’s never the clubs; it’s the player. But the Armour clubs were different, and I changed my swing to try to accommodate the clubs, and I just wasn’t as good. My game fell apart. Was it mental? Physical? Both? Who knows? All I know is, I wasn’t the same player.”

  Tolles went from 27th on the money list in 1997 to 115th a year later. He improved a little in 1999, finishing 85th, but hadn’t been in the top 125 since. He went to the Nationwide Tour and played steadily there, actually getting his tour card back at the end of 2003 after finishing 20th on the Nationwide money list. But he languished on after his tour in 2004, making just eight cuts, and ended up 201st.

  Tolles is one of those players others look at and wonder what has gone wrong. He has the personality to become a star, because he’s just a little goofy. His hair color often changes from week to week, and he is disarmingly honest, with an occasionally off-the-wall sense of humor—most of it directed at himself. He is one of the few players who willingly admits that he likes chess.

  “I’ve figured some things out about myself because of my failures,” he said. “When I was young and starting out, I really thought there was nothing I wouldn’t do to get to the top. I remember telling my wife when we got married, ‘There is nothing and no one who is going to stop me from being the best, including you.’

  “Well, that turned out not to be true. I found I could shoot 80 and come home and my kids still loved me, and I could live with the 80. I think [with] the guys that really burn inside, that isn’t the case. I want to win, but I don’t think I’m willing to push someone up against a wall to beat them.

  “All that time I spent listening to all those teachers, trying to be Tiger or Ernie or Vijay, was wasted time. I’m not them, and I can’t be them. I have to try to be the best Tommy Tolles I can be—whatever that is. I’d like to get back on tour now and see how I can do, because my perspective is different now. I’ve seen it from both sides.”

  Tolles sold the farm in Flat Rock—“between my golf and the end of the Internet boom, we had to downsize”—and he and his family were living in a smaller house in a bigger town (Hendersonville, population 25,000, as opposed to the 3,000 who live in Flat Rock), but still in North Carolina.

  “It’s very easy to get spoiled on the PGA Tour,” Tolles said. “Everything is spoon-fed to you. Whatever you want, you’ve got it. Going from there to the Nationwide is a little bit like going from a five-star restaurant to Kentucky Fried Chicken. Of course, that’s not all bad. You have to think for yourself more, and you learn again how to do things for yourself.

  “Still, I’d like to be out there on the big tour again. When I first got there in ’95, I was just playing golf and letting the cards fall wherever they fell. After a while, I was protecting what I had. I think if I went back, I’d be able to get my ’95 attitude back.

  “Of course, I’m still a long way from getting there. [CBS analyst and swing guru] Peter Kostis once said there are two kinds of players. At one end is Nick Faldo, who plays with a wall around him. At the other end is Bruce Lietzke, who is always playing and thinking outside the box. Sometimes I think I’m both.”

  He smiled. “Which may explain a lot.”

  A LOT OF DREAMS DIE DURING THE THIRD ROUND. A player who is way back after 36 holes knows there is still time to get into contention. Not so if one is still way back after 54. Mike Hulbert, who had started the third round near the back of the pack, shot 67 to move into a tie for 21st—one shot away from the cut line, which was now at five under par. Steve Wheatcroft, a twenty-seven-year-old mini-tour player who had walked onto the golf team at Indiana after no one had recruited him out of high school, shot 69 to get to six under par, putting himself in position to make the finals for the first time. Tripp Isenhour, a Nationwide Tour veteran who had once been on the PGA Tour, also shot 69 to get to the cut line.

  Twenty players were tied at five under par or better with 18 holes to play. Twelve more players were one shot back, and four more were two shots back. “In theory, anyone who is at even par or better has a shot tomorrow,” said Grant Waite, who had stumbled to 74 but still appeared to be very comfortable at nine under par. “Someone who is way back will go low, and a couple of guys who are well inside the number right now will go backward.” He smiled, his eyes fixed on the scoreboard. “I just hope I’m not one of them.”

  A lot of players were scoreboard-watching at the end of the day—many of them hoping they might somehow change the numbers by staring at them. Garrett Frank had started the day knowing he had to go low since he was at two over par. He spent the round running in place, shooting 72, meaning he made up no ground and was now seven shots outside the cut and behind so many players it would take a miracle round to keep his hopes alive.

  “I need to shoot 64–65—at least,” he said with a deep sigh. “Today I hit the ball about as well as I can hit it, and I just couldn’t make a putt. Honestly, I don’t think I had a birdie putt longer than 10 feet, and I couldn’t make a thing.”

  Frank’s shoulders sagged as he talked his round through with some friends. He winced at the thought of what might have been or, more accurately, what needed to be. “Last year when this happened, I said, ‘That’s it, I’m going home; time’s up,’” he said. “I got through the holidays and all the questions about why I wasn’t on tour. Then it got to be January, and, of course, the weather in Ohio was terrible, and I started thinking about the boys back in Florida teeing it up. I missed it—right away. So I went back. I honestly don’t know what I’ll do this time around.”

  For the moment, Frank headed to the putting green, hoping to find something in his putter for the next day.

  Ty Tryon had been on that same green until dark the day before, also searching. He had started the day in the exact same spot as Frank and had gone backward, shooting 74, which, realistically, ended his hopes of getting back to where he had been four years earlie
r.

  “The way I have to look at it is that golf’s a game you play your whole life,” he said. “I’m still only twenty-one. If I hadn’t done what I had done at seventeen, this wouldn’t be so discouraging—that’s the irony of it. I try to keep telling myself I’m still learning and growing, and I know I am. But days like today are very hard to swallow. I know I’ve got the game, but knowing it doesn’t mean a thing. Numbers don’t lie.”

  The numbers on the board told other sad stories. Josh McCumber, who had started the day at three under par, shot 76, putting him virtually out of contention. Brad Elder, who had been labeled a can’t-miss star coming out of the University of Texas in 1998, had been on the tour from 2000 to 2003. But he had dropped from 68th on the money list in 2000 to 217th in 2003 after having shoulder problems. He was now trying to make a comeback at the age of thirty. He had started the day in good position at five under par but could do no better than 74, which dropped him from a tie for 16th place into a tie for 36th place. David Gossett’s 78 all but ended his chances, and Chad Wilfong, who had made the finals a year earlier and had started the day at one under par, had gone into full reverse, shooting 77.

  Wilfong hadn’t started playing golf until the age of thirteen and had improved steadily right through his college career at Wake Forest. “When I was a kid, I hated golf,” he said, smiling. “I played some with my dad, but I figured it was a sport for old people. I played tennis and baseball and basketball. I liked to run, not walk.

  “But there was a group of kids in my neighborhood who played all the time. One of them was the son of the pro at the club where we played—Thomas O’Brian. I just couldn’t beat him. I started beating balls for hours just so I could beat him. Next thing I knew, I was a decent player.”

  Wilfong was recruited to go to Wake Forest by Jerry Haas, brother of Jay Haas and a former tour player himself. He ended up becoming a teammate of Jay’s son, Bill. “Bill is the most talented golfer I’ve ever been around,” he said. “Most of us on the Wake golf team would hit balls for hours. Bill would hit forty balls and go watch a football game. We used to joke that he never met a range that he liked. I’m not like that. I need to keep working at my game to improve.”

  Wilfong started 2005 with conditional status on the Nationwide Tour and finished 97th on the money list, even though he got into only sixteen events. “I’d like to believe if I had played a full schedule, I would have at least been in the top 50,” he said, a notion backed up by the fact that he finished 40th in scoring average. “The key for me, I think, is getting a job playing out here for the next fifteen years. That’s my goal.”

  Twenty-five, with a mop of light brown hair and a 6-foot-3-inch, 170-pound two-iron of a body, Wilfong looked as if he could still be in college. He had come to Lake Jovita fighting his swing but had managed to hang in contention for two rounds. “You have to do that this week,” he said. “My game just isn’t where I want it right now, but it doesn’t matter. I have to go out and fight my way around and try to get through here.

  “The biggest difference between the best players and the rest of us is that they know they’re better than everyone else. It’s not something that comes to most of us that easily. Bill’s got it—you can see it; you can feel it when you talk to him. Toward the end of the year, he skipped an event even though he was trying to make the top 20 on the Nationwide list. I asked him why, and he said he’d played seven in a row, and he figured if he played well the last couple weeks, he’d make it. If he didn’t, he wouldn’t. Of course, he didn’t figure on Miami getting canceled because of a hurricane. The point, though, is this: Bill knows he’s going to be on tour; it’s just a matter of when. Realistically, right now, if I had full Nationwide playing status next year, I’d be thrilled. I’m still trying to get good enough to feel as if I belong out on tour. Bill already knows he’s good enough.”

  Wilfong lost the battle with his swing during the third round, meaning he would spend another year with conditional status (based on his money list finish) on the Nationwide. Like most of the players who had either failed to make a move or had gone backward in the third round, he walked off the course with a blank look on his face, knowing he would have to wait another year for another chance.

  Those who had played well weren’t celebrating by any means. For the trailers, 18 more holes wouldn’t be nearly enough. For the leaders, 18 holes would feel like an eternity.

  ONE OF THE TRAILERS decided to become a spectator for the last round. Guy Boros had one of the most famous last names in golf. He was the son of Julius Boros, who had won two U.S. Opens and a PGA Championship during his Hall of Fame career. His son, if you listen to those who have played with him, might have as much talent—which is saying a lot.

  “When I was a kid, people would ask me all the time if I thought I could be as good a player someday as my dad,” Guy said. He was sitting on a golf cart after the third round, watching other players pounding balls in the late-afternoon heat. “I would laugh and say, ‘Oh, no, someday I’m going to be better than my dad. Of course, I had absolutely no idea at the time just how good—how great—my dad was. It wasn’t until I really started chasing the game a little that I understood what kind of a player he had been. I still remember when I was ten, watching him at Westchester. He was fifty-five, and he ended up losing in a play-off to Gene Littler. It never occurred to me how amazing that was, or how amazing it was that he won the PGA [Championship] when he was forty-eight. Now, looking back, I realize I would have to be a hell of a player to be half as good as my dad was.”

  Guy Boros was a good player, blessed with the same kind of easy, natural rhythm for the golf swing that his father had. He looks almost exactly like his father: the same soft, broad features and stocky build, with an easy, laid-back manner. He was a three-time all-American at the University of Iowa and spent a number of years working his way up the golfing ladder, going from the Canadian Tour to the Nike Tour and finally to the PGA Tour. He often took time off from playing to caddy for his father on the Senior Tour.

  “I loved doing that,” he said. “When I first started playing golf, people always told me what a good man my father was, and I sort of nodded and said, ‘Yeah, sure, I know.’ But as I’ve gotten older and had kids of my own, and realized how he managed to spend time with all seven of his kids and got to see him with people, I realized he was a very good man.

  “The problem for me has always been simple: I never loved the game the way my father did. He loved being on a golf course— anywhere, anytime. He loved hitting balls; he could do it all day. I was never that way. I always had talent, and I could always play, but I was never really passionate about it. You can’t make yourself passionate about something. You either are or you aren’t.”

  He smiled. “Growing up, what I really wanted to be was a policeman. I even majored in criminal justice in college. Now there’s part of me that wants to go off and be a fishing captain. That’s what my brother does, and I’ve got my license.”

  He sighed. “But golf is what I do. It’s what I’ve always done. For a long time, it came so easy to me, other guys on tour called me ‘the faucet,’ because I could just turn it on when I needed to. Well, the faucet’s rusted and not working these days. It’s frustrating as hell, too, because I really have tried to figure out how to get it back, and so far it isn’t happening.”

  Julius Boros died in 1994, while his son, then a rookie on the tour, was playing the Colonial, a tournament his father won in 1960 and again in 1963. Two years later, Guy Boros won in Vancouver and became part of golf history by becoming just the fourth son of a past PGA Tour winner also to win. But the faucet began to run dry a couple of years later, and he lost his exemption in 1999. After that, he played most of his golf on the Nationwide Tour, winning three times. In 2003, he finished 14th on the money list to get back to the PGA Tour in 2004. But that year he finished 208th on the money list and spent 2005 back on the Nationwide. He had just turned forty-one, and his curly hair was starting to s
how streaks of gray.

  “No one ever thinks of themselves as being old, but when I play with some of the young guys and see how far they hit it, I feel old,” he said. “I just can’t find that kind of distance. Still, I see signs that it’s still there. I played six PGA Tour events this year and made three cuts, so it isn’t like I was just taking up space there. I still believe I can have a week where the stars align and I can win again.”

  He lit a cigarette. “Of course, there’s been absolutely no evidence of that here this week.”

  Boros had arrived at Lake Jovita feeling confident. He knew the course well, since he often made the drive up from his home in Fort Lauderdale to play with Tim Petrovic and Garrett Willis, the two pros in residence there, and the Damron brothers, Robert and Patrick, who live nearby. He thought he would be able to draw on his experience down the stretch if he could play his way into contention.

  Unfortunately, he never came close to contending. After he shot 74 the first day, he headed to the range, hoping to find something that would straighten out his swing. “To be honest, this sucks,” he said. “I feel helpless right now. Part of me says I should walk away; part of me says I can still find it.”

  He was on the range again the next day after a 76 left him in second-to-last place. “I have to hope there’s a low round out there for me,” he said. “I have to keep trying. This,” he gestured around the range at other players hammering balls, “is what I know.”

  A day later, he shot 76 again, leaving him 15 shots outside the cut line with one round to go. This time he skipped the range. “My head hurts,” he said, “from the brick wall it’s been beaten into all week.”

  9

  The Unkindest Cuts of All

  IT WAS WINDIER ON THE MORNING of the last day at Lake Jovita, meaning that low scoring was even less likely than it would normally be on the last day of second stage.